Getting Started/Junior Prefect

The position of a Junior Prefect is the beginning of a transition from a constant worry about building up the city to having an impact on the greater world around you. From here, warfare is going to be a much more important skill and will start to dominate the time players put into playing this game. By now, politics should also start to be a significant issue, where membership in an alliance is not merely a good idea but absolutely necessary for survival.

If a player is not a member of an alliance at this point, either form one or seek out a friendly neighbor to join in one. Alliances have levels and benefits to their members that significantly impact how the game is played. Failure to use these benefits can only hurt players in the long run. Generally players who have reached the level of being a Junior Prefect have demonstrated that they are serious enough players that they are desirable to the alliances as well.

Contents

Rather than giving a step by step guide over what buildings should be built and when, this is just a general list of suggested buildings and their levels as should be the case before a player has completed the requirements to become a Senior Prefect:

Leave advancing the garrison as a very low priority item for now, but it will become important eventually.

Emphasis should be placed on the Palace and Ramparts at this time as those take quite some time to complete, and in particular each level of the Palace expands the resources available to players in the city.

Of special concern is to not raise the Palace level any higher than level 9 while a player is under new player protection. As soon as the Palace is raised to level 10, a couple of things happen. Most significantly, the new player protection ends and the player becomes a ripe target for attack from other players who have been playing the game much longer. Until the armies are large enough and strong enough, it is far more important to take advantage of that protection as long as possible. The other significant issue is that once the Palace is above level 10, the city can be enslaved or occupied by another player. This guide is going to (hopefully) give some guidance in terms of raising an army that can protect this city and at least act as a deterrent to discourage this kind of action from happening. The armies currently under the control of the player are small, but they soon will grow in number and quality.

There are several areas of research that players can be researching at this time, but by way of mention some research efforts have a particularly profound impact at this time:

Construction - each level helps to speed up how quickly buildings can be made in a city. Raising this level impacts how quickly other buildings can be made as well.

Conscription - Not only is the Conscription skill necessary for other useful skills like Army Attack and Army Defense, it also decreases the time it takes to raise or create soldiers as well.

Leadership - Each level helps to increase the total number of soldiers that each legend can command. A high Leadership skill can significantly impact battles and simply act as a deterrent for other players trying to attack the main city.

All of the skills have value and can be important to the growth of a city, but these are certainly skills to concentrate on in the early development of the city.

One final push to raise the highest level of each resource type should be made at this time. One of each kind of resource should be raised to level 14, and there should be an effort to increase food and wood resources as well. For nearly everything that a player may wish to do at this point forward, the stone and copper produced in the city at the current rate is more than sufficient. A growing army, however, will start to significantly eat up food reserves and therefore an effort should be made to expand cropland and timber mills in the outskirts of the city. Use the Marketplace to purchase additional resources as needed to grow the city, but eventually there will be so much in terms of excess stone that quite a bit will simply be waste. If the villages have been built up, gold will not be a significant problem.

Assuming a level 9 Palace has been built, the following are recommended resource area levels for a Junior Prefect. These should be built up as needed and between other construction projects as time permits:

By now a player should have a Garrison of at least level 10, and the nucleus of a small army that can help support the growing needs of the city and to even start bringing in some additional resources to help in the growth of the city as well. Even a little bit can help, and a strong army can multiply construction efforts within the city.

The role of Archers in this game can't be underestimated, particularly when players are first starting to grow their cities beyond the initial concerns internal development. One of the key issues is that players should be retrieving more resources in the process of attacking a wildland than it consumes to replace losses. It is in this role that archers excel, as they get the first attack on any other unit, and if those archers can wipe out those soldiers before the counter-attack happens, no archers are lost in combat. In theory, players can be able to keep attacking at least the low level wildlands without any troop losses at all, and even when archers attack other archer units, the losses can be minimalized if players take some precautions.

Each attack that a legend is involved with will gain a small amount of experience for performing the attack. In addition, an attack will also gain reputation for the player which is important for advancement. Battles that are closer matched for the legend and are just barely within their grasp are more likely to earn reputation and a larger amount of reputation than for powerful legends attacking other players and wildlands that are simply well within a legend's ability. For instance, a level 12 legend with full troop strength invading a level 0 wildland may not earn any reputation, but a level 1 legend (even with the same player) may earn quite a bit of reputation by attacking a level 0 wildland.

The following table helps represent the number of archers that would be recommended in attacks against other wildlands:

Wildland level

Number of Archers

0

100

1

200

2

400

3

800

4

1200

5

1800

At wildland level 3 and above, sometimes other archers are encountered. It is possible to minimize the damage by spying on the wildland first to see if it may contain archers, and avoid those wildlands. On the other hand, player may simply wish to have sufficient replacement soldiers on hand to sustain attacks even against other archer units. The key is to have overwhelming numbers so that players can hit the other units in one round. If a battle goes into a second or third round (it can go on for as many as 12 rounds or more for very closely matched armies), the losses of the attacking army start to become increasingly larger to the point that significant resources are being lost in the attack.

There are some reasons for perhaps attempting to invade some of the higher level wildlands with a weaker force, particularly to perform some of the "daily tasks" associated with the ranks of the player. Still, as a general rule it should be avoided unless the legends under control of the player have sufficient soldiers to make the attempt.

As players get a higher level for their palace, they are permitted to "occupy" a wildland. The most significant difference between occupying a wildland and simply invading that wildland is that occupation provides a "bonus" to the city from where the attack took place. This bonus varies based on the wildland level and the kind of wildland has an impact upon what resources are impacted. It is possible to explore a controlled wildland which grants experience, resources, and possible items. Level 3 wildlands and above can provide better items.